1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an automatic warehouse system and more specifically to an automatic storage system. This invention is directed to storing and withdrawing articles in an automatic warehouse by using the factors of time and human intervention most economically.
2. Description of the Background Art
With the advance of consumption activities, quick distribution of articles such as commodities or parts has become important. To improve management of distribution of articles, various methods have been proposed.
Since a concentrated management is preferable for managing a great assortment of and a great quantity of commodities of parts, a large scale warehouse is required to realize a concentrated management for both warehousing and distributing commodities of parts. Such warehouses are generally automated, that is forklifts and conveying robots are utilized.
Furthermore, storage facilities have been equipped with gravity roller tracks for transferring articles in a warehouse, particularly for transferring articles from the storage shelves on a conveyor. Examples of such conventional art are disclosed in Tomasello, Jr. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,527,939) and in Lemelson (U.S. Pat. No. 3,520,424).
However, since such racks have been arranged in an uneconomical order, too much time for replenishing and picking procedures is required, combined with a high error rate.
Increased needs for more efficient and more economical warehousing require new, modern, faster facilities and these facilities need to be arranged in a more efficient order allowing to considerably lower the time needed for composing shipment configuration of articles according to an order as well as to reduce the error rate down to a reasonable level. An efficient warehouse system also requires an optimized management of storage capacity relating to factors like e.g. free capacity, number of articles carried in, type of articles, age of the articles, date of storage or the like.